On Grace and Free Will 15–20

But lest it be thought that men themselves do nothing there by free choice, it is said in the psalm, “Do not harden your hearts.” And through Ezekiel himself: “Cast away from you all your ungodlinesses which you have ungodly committed against me, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit, and keep all my commandments. Why will you die, house of Israel, says the Lord? For I do not will the death of him who dies, says Adonai the Lord; turn, and live.” Let us remember that he says, “turn, and live,” to whom it is said, “Turn us, O God.” Let us remember that he says, “Cast away from you all your ungodlinesses,” though it is he who justifies the ungodly. Let us remember that he himself says, “Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit,” who says, “I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you.” How, then, does he who says, “Make yourselves,” say, “I will give you”? Why does he command, if he himself is going to give? Why does he give, if man is going to make it? Is it not because he gives what he commands, when he helps the one he commands to do it? Now there is always in us a free will, but it is not always good. For either it is free from righteousness, when it serves sin, and then it is evil; or it is free from sin, when it serves righteousness, and then it is good. But the grace of God is always good, and through it it comes about that a man is of good will who before was of evil will. Through it also it comes about that the good will itself, which has already begun to be, is increased and becomes so great that it can fulfil the divine commandments that it wills, when it wills strongly and perfectly. For this is the point of what is written, “If you will, you will keep the commandments”: that the man who has willed and has not been able may recognize that he does not yet will fully, and may pray to have so great a will as is sufficient to fulfil the commandments. For thus he is helped to do what is commanded. For then it is useful to will, when we are able; and then it is useful to be able, when we will. For what does it profit if we will what we cannot, or do not will what we can?

The Pelagians think they know something great when they say, “God would not command what he knew could not be done by man.” Who does not know this? But he commands some things that we cannot do so that we may know what we ought to ask of him. For this is faith, which by praying obtains what the law commands. Indeed, the very man who said, “If you will, you will keep the commandments,” says a little later in the same book of Ecclesiasticus, “Who will set a guard on my mouth, and a shrewd seal upon my lips, lest I fall by it and my tongue destroy me?” He had certainly already received the commandments: “Keep your tongue from evil, and let your lips not speak deceit.” Since, then, what he said is true, “If you will, you will keep the commandments,” why does he ask that a guard be given to his mouth, like him who says in the Psalm, “Set a guard, O Lord, on my mouth”? Why are God's commandment and his own will not enough for him, since, if he wills, he will keep the commandments? How many commandments of God there are against pride! He already knows them; if he wills, he will keep them. Why, then, does he say a little later, “O Lord, Father and God of my life, do not give me a haughty look”? The law had already said to him, “You shall not desire”: let him will, then, and do what he is commanded, since, if he wills, he will keep the commandments. Why does he go on to say, “Turn away desire from me”? How much God has commanded against lust! Let him do it, since, if he wills, he will keep the commandments. Why is it that he cries to God, “Let not the craving of the belly and sexual intercourse take hold of me”? If we said this to him in person, he would answer us most rightly and say: “From this prayer of mine, in which I ask these things of God, understand how I said, ‘If you will, you will keep the commandments.’ For it is certain that we keep the commandments if we will; but because the will is prepared by the Lord, we must ask of him that we may will as much as is sufficient for us to act by willing.” It is certain that we will when we will; but he brings it about that we will the good, he of whom it is said, as I quoted a little earlier, “The will is prepared by the Lord”; of whom it is said, “The steps of a man are directed by the Lord, and he will will his way”; of whom it is said, “For it is God who works in you even to will.” It is certain that we act when we act; but he brings it about that we act, by supplying most effective strength to the will, he who said, “I will make you walk in my ordinances, and keep my judgments and do them.” When he says, “I will make you do them,” what else does he say but, “I will take away from you the heart of stone, from which you did not do them, and I will give you a heart of flesh, from which you will do them”? And what is this but, “I will take away the hard heart, from which you did not do them, and I will give an obedient heart, from which you will do them”? He brings it about that we act, to whom a man says, “Set a guard, O Lord, on my mouth.” For this is to say, “Make me set a guard on my mouth”; a benefit of God which he had already obtained who said, “I have set a guard on my mouth.”

He, then, who wills to do God's commandment and cannot, already has a good will, but one still small and weak; he will be able when he has a great and strong one. For when the martyrs did those great commandments, they certainly did them with a great will, that is, with great love; of which love the Lord himself says, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Hence the Apostle too says, “For he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law. For ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not desire,’ and any other commandment there is, is summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ Love does no evil to a neighbour; therefore love is the fullness of the law.” The apostle Peter did not yet have this love when out of fear he denied the Lord three times. “For there is no fear in love,” as John the evangelist says in his Epistle, “but perfect love casts out fear.” And yet, though small and imperfect, it was not lacking when he said to the Lord, “I will lay down my life for you”; for he thought he could do what he felt he willed. And who had begun to give this love, though small, but he who prepares the will, and by cooperating brings to completion what he begins by operating? For he who, completing, cooperates with those who will, is the one who, beginning, works that we may will. This is why the Apostle says, “I am confident that he who works a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.” So that we may will, then, he works without us; but when we will, and will so as to act, he cooperates with us; yet without him, either working that we may will or cooperating when we will, we can do nothing toward the good works of godliness. Of his working that we may will it is said, “For it is God who works in you even to will.” And of his cooperating when we already will and by willing act: “We know,” he says, “that for those who love God all things work together for good.” What does “all things” mean, if not also those terrible and cruel sufferings? For that burden of Christ, which is heavy to weakness, is made light to love. For the Lord said that his burden is light to such as Peter was when he suffered for Christ, not such as he was when he denied Christ. Commending this love, that is, a will burning most ardently with divine love, the Apostle says: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are put to death all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.’ But in all these things we more than conquer through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And in another place he says: “And I show you a still more excellent way. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries, and if I have all faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I distribute all my goods to the poor, and if I hand over my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love is magnanimous, love is kind; love does not envy, does not act wrongly, is not puffed up, is not unseemly, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice over iniquity but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things; love never fails.” And a little later: “There remain,” he says, “faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. Pursue love.” Again he says to the Galatians: “For you were called to freedom, brothers; only do not give your freedom as an occasion for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in this: you shall love your neighbour as yourself.” This is what he says to the Romans, “He who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Again he says to the Colossians: “But above all these things, love, which is the bond of perfection.” And to Timothy: “The end of the commandment,” he says, “is love”; and adding what kind of love: “from a pure heart,” he says, “and a good conscience and faith unfeigned.” And when he says to the Corinthians, “Let all that you do be done with love,” he shows clearly enough that even rebukes, which those who are rebuked feel to be harsh and bitter, must be given with love. Hence elsewhere, when he had said, “Rebuke the unruly, comfort the fainthearted, support the weak, be patient toward all,” he at once added, “See that no one renders evil for evil to anyone.” So even when the unruly are rebuked, not evil for evil but rather good is rendered. And what works all these things but love? And the apostle Peter: “Above all,” he says, “having constant love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins.” The apostle James also says: “If indeed you fulfil the royal law, according to the Scriptures, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself,’ you do well.” Likewise the apostle John: “He who loves his brother,” he says, “abides in the light.” And in another place: “He who is not righteous is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother; for this is the message that we heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” And again elsewhere: “This,” he says, “is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another.” And again: “This commandment,” he says, “we have from him, that he who loves God love his brother also.” And a little later: “By this,” he says, “we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and do his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments; and his commandments are not burdensome.” And in the second Epistle it is written: “Not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another.” The Lord Jesus himself also says that the whole Law and the Prophets depend on the two commandments of love of God and love of neighbour. Of these two commandments it is written in the Gospel according to Mark: “And one of the scribes, who had heard them disputing, came up, and seeing that he had answered them well, asked him which was the first commandment of all. Jesus answered him: The first commandment of all is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God; and, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind: this is the first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” He also says in the Gospel according to John: “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you, that you too love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

All these precepts of love, that is, of charity, which are so many and so great that whatever a man thinks he does well, if it is done without love, is in no way done well: these precepts of love would be given to men in vain if they did not have free choice of the will. But since they are given through the law, both old and new (though in the new came the grace that was promised in the old; and the law without grace is the letter that kills, but in grace is the spirit that gives life), from where does the love of God and of neighbour come in men, if not from God himself? For if it is not from God but from men, the Pelagians have won; but if it is from God, we have defeated the Pelagians. Let the apostle John, then, sit as judge between us and say to us: “Beloved, let us love one another.” When at these words of John they begin to lift themselves up and say, “Why is this commanded to us, unless because we have from ourselves the ability to love one another?”, the same John at once follows, confounding them and saying, “for love is from God.” Not, then, from us, but from God. Why, then, was it said, “Let us love one another, for love is from God,” unless because free choice was admonished by the precept to seek the gift of God? It would indeed be admonished altogether without fruit unless it first received something of love, so as to seek to have added to it that by which it might fulfil what was commanded. When it is said, “Let us love one another,” it is law; when it is said, “for love is from God,” it is grace. For the wisdom of God carries law and mercy on her tongue. Hence it is written in the Psalm: “For he who gave the law will give the blessing.” Let no one deceive you, then, my brothers: we would not love God unless he first loved us. The same John shows this most plainly and says, “Let us love, because he first loved us.” Grace makes us lovers of the law; but the law itself without grace makes only transgressors. And what the Lord says to his disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you,” indicates nothing else to us. For if we loved first, so that by this merit he might love us, then we chose him first, so that we might deserve to be chosen by him. But he who is the truth says otherwise, and most plainly contradicts this vanity of men: “You did not choose me,” he says. If, then, you did not choose, without doubt you did not love either; for how would they choose one whom they did not love? “But I,” he says, “chose you.” Did they not themselves afterwards choose him, and prefer him to all the goods of this world? But because they were chosen, they chose; they were not chosen because they chose. There would be no merit in men choosing, unless the grace of God choosing them went before them. Hence the apostle Paul too, blessing the Thessalonians, says, “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love toward one another and toward all.” He who had given the law that we should love one another gave this blessing that we might love one another. Then in another place to the same people, because without doubt in some of them there already was what he had wished for them: “We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers,” he says, “as is fitting, because your faith grows exceedingly, and the love of each one of you toward one another abounds.” He said this lest perhaps they should be lifted up about so great a good, which they had from God, as if they had it from themselves. Since, then, “your faith grows exceedingly,” he says, “and the love of each one of you toward one another abounds, we ought to give thanks to God for you,” not to praise you as if you had this from yourselves. And to Timothy he says: “For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self-control.” In this testimony of the Apostle we must certainly take care not to think that we have not received the spirit of the fear of God, which without doubt is a great gift of God, of which the prophet Isaiah says: “The spirit of wisdom and understanding shall rest upon him, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and godliness, the spirit of the fear of the Lord.” It is not the fear by which Peter denied Christ, but the spirit of that fear we have received of which Christ himself says: “Fear him who has power to destroy both soul and body in hell; yes, I tell you, fear him.” He said this so that we should not deny him with that fear by which Peter was troubled. For he wished this fear to be taken from us when he had said just before, “Do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more that they can do.” Of this fear we have not received the spirit, but of power and love and self-control. Of this Spirit the same apostle says to the Romans: “We glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works patience, patience proof, proof hope; and hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Not through ourselves, then, but through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us, it comes about by that very love, which he shows to be God's gift, that tribulation does not take away patience but rather works it. To the Ephesians also he says, “Peace to the brothers, and love with faith.” Great goods! But let him say from where: “From God the Father,” he says, “and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Therefore these great goods are nothing but God's gifts.

But it is no wonder if the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it. In John the light says, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called sons of God, and so we are.” And in the Pelagians the darkness says, “Our love is from ourselves.” If they had true love, that is, Christian love, they would also know where they had it from; as the Apostle knew, who said, “But we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we may know the things that have been given us by God.” John says, “God is love”; and the Pelagians say that they have even God himself not from God but from themselves; and while they confess that the knowledge of the law is ours from God, they want love to be from ourselves. Nor do they hear the Apostle saying, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” What is more foolish, indeed what is more insane and more foreign to the very holiness of love, than to confess that knowledge, which without love puffs up, is from God, and that love, which makes it impossible for knowledge to puff up, is from us? Again, since the Apostle speaks of “the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,” what is madder than to think that knowledge, which must be subordinate to love, is from God, while love, which surpasses knowledge, is from men? But true faith and sound doctrine say that both are from God, for it is written, “From his face come knowledge and understanding”; it is written, “Love is from God.” And we read of “the Spirit of knowledge and godliness”; we read of “the Spirit of power and love and self-control.” But love is a greater gift than knowledge; for when knowledge is in a man, love is necessary so that he may not be puffed up; but “love does not envy, does not act wrongly, is not puffed up.”

I think I have argued enough against those who vehemently attack the grace of God, by which the human will is not taken away but changed from evil to good, and helped when it has become good; and argued in such a way that it is not so much I as the divine Scripture itself that has spoken with you, by the clearest testimonies of the truth. This divine Scripture, if carefully examined, shows that not only the good wills of men, which he himself makes from evil ones and, once made good by him, directs to good acts and to eternal life, but also those which follow the creatures of this world, are so in God's power that he makes them incline where he wills and when he wills, either to bestow benefits on some or to inflict punishments on others, as he himself judges, by a judgment most hidden indeed, but without any doubt most just. For we find that some sins are also punishments of other sins: such are the vessels of wrath, which the Apostle says were fitted for destruction; such is the hardening of Pharaoh, the reason for which is also stated, to show the power of God in him; such is the flight of the Israelites from the face of the enemy from the city of Ai: for fear arose in their minds so that they fled, and this was done so that sin might be punished, and in the way in which it ought to be punished. Hence the Lord says to Joshua the son of Nun, “The sons of Israel will not be able to stand before the face of their enemies.” What does “will not be able to stand” mean? Why did they not stand by free choice, but fled with their will thrown into confusion by fear, unless because God has dominion even over the wills of men, and, when angry, turns into terror whom he wills? Did not the enemies of the Israelites fight by their own will against the people of God whom Joshua the son of Nun was leading? And yet Scripture says that it came about by the Lord that their hearts were strengthened to go out to war against Israel, so that they might be destroyed. Did not that wicked man, the Benjamite, curse King David by his own will? And yet what does David say, full of true, deep, and godly wisdom? What does he say to the one who wanted to strike down the man who was cursing? “What have I to do with you,” he says, “you sons of Zeruiah? Let him alone and let him curse; for the Lord has told him to curse David. And who shall say to him, ‘Why have you done so?’” Then the divine Scripture, commending the king's full statement by repeating it as from another beginning, says: “And David said to Abishai and to all his servants: Behold, my son, who came forth from my body, seeks my life; and how much more now this Benjamite? Let him alone, let him curse, for the Lord has told him, so that the Lord may look on my humiliation and repay me good for his cursing this day.” What wise man will understand how the Lord told this man to curse David? For he did not tell him by commanding, in which case obedience would be praised; but because, by his own just and hidden judgment, he inclined to this sin the man's will, which was evil by its own fault, therefore it is said, “the Lord told him.” For if he had obeyed God's command, he would deserve praise rather than punishment, whereas we know that he was later punished for this sin. Nor is the reason kept silent why the Lord told him in this way to curse David, that is, sent or let loose his evil heart into this sin: “so that the Lord may see my humiliation,” he says, “and repay me good for his cursing this day.” See how it is proved that God uses even the hearts of the wicked for the praise and help of the good. So he used Judas when he betrayed Christ; so he used the Jews when they crucified Christ. And how great the goods he thereby bestowed on the peoples who would believe! He uses even the devil himself, who is most wicked, but uses him most well, to exercise and test the faith and godliness of the good; not for his own sake, who knows all things before they happen, but for ours, for whom it was necessary that we be dealt with in this way. Did not Absalom by his own will choose the counsel that was harmful to him? And yet he did so because the Lord had heard his father praying that this might happen. That is why Scripture says: “And the Lord commanded that the good counsel of Ahithophel be defeated, so that the Lord might bring all evils upon Absalom.” It called it good counsel because it served his cause for the time: it was in his favour against his father, against whom he had rebelled, so that he could have crushed him, had not the Lord defeated the counsel that Ahithophel had given, by acting in Absalom's heart so that he rejected such counsel and chose another that was not to his advantage.